The Calcutta Chromosome

'So the bulbs go off in Ro

'Did Ross have malaria himself?' Antar asked.

'He got it about halfvay into his work,' said Murugan.

He directed a sharply appraising glance at Antar. 'Why'd you ask? Have you ever had it yourself?'

Antar nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'a long time ago, in Egypt.'

Murugan sat up. 'That's fu

'I suppose I was an exception,' said Antar.

'So was yours a freak case? Or was there a localized outbreak?'

'I don't know,' said Antar shortly.

'Do you ever get relapses?' Murugan persisted.

'Sometimes,' Antar said.

'That's how it goes,' Murugan said with a wry smile. 'You think it's gone for ever and suddenly, it's hey, long time no see.'

'So you get them too!' Antar said, raising his eyebrows.

'Do I ever!' Murugan laughed. 'But you know, I don't worry about it too much. I guess it's because malaria isn't just a disease. Sometimes it's also a cure.'

'A cure?' Antar said. 'For what?'

'Ever heard of Julius Wagner-Jauregg?'

'No.'

'He won the Nobel too; for stuff he did with malaria. He was even born the same year as Ro

'What?' said Antar.

'He discovered that artificially induced malaria could cure syphilis – at least in the dementia paralytica stage when it attacks the brain.'

'It sounds incredible,' said Antar.

'Sure,' said Murugan. 'But it still got him the Nobel in 1927. Artificially induced malaria was the standard treatment for syphilitic paresis until the forties. Fact is, malaria does stuff to the brain that we're still just guessing at.'

'But to come back to Ross,' said Antar. 'You say he didn't catch malaria until he was well into his work? So what got him interested in it, then?'

'It was the Zeitgeist,' said Murugan. 'Malaria was the cold fusion of his day; the Sunday papers were scrambling to get it on their covers. And it figures: malaria's probably the all time biggest killer among diseases. Next to the common cold it's just about the most prevalent disease on the planet. We're not talking about a disease which shoots off the charts suddenly some century like the plague or smallpox or syphilis. Malaria's been around since the big bang or thereabouts, pegged at about the same level all along. There's no place on earth that's off the malaria map: Arctic circle, freezing mountaintop, burning desert, you name it, malaria's been there. We're not talking millions of cases here; more like hundreds of millions. We don't even know how many, because malaria's so widespread it doesn't always get on the charts. And besides, it's a master of disguise: it can mimic the symptoms of more diseases than you can begin to count – lumbago, the 'flu, cerebral haemorrhage, yellow fever. And even when it's properly diagnosed it's not like quinine is always going to get you home safe. With certain kinds of malaria you can mainline quinine all the livelong day and come nightfall you'll still be gathering freezer-burn in the mortuary. It's only fatal in a fraction of all reported cases but when you're dealing with hundreds of millions, a fraction adds up to the population of an economy-size country.'

'So when Ross began,' Antar said, 'was there a new interest in malaria?'

'You bet,' said Murugan. 'The mid-nineteenth century was when the scientific community began to wake up to malaria. Remember this was the century when old Mother Europe was settling all the Last Unknowns: Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, even uncolonized parts of herself. Forests, deserts, oceans, warlike natives – that stuff's easy to deal with when you've got dynamite and the Gatling gun; chicken-feed compared to malaria. Don't forget it wasn't that long ago when pretty much every settler along the Mississippi had to take time off every other day for an attack of the shakes. It was just as bad in the swamps around Rome; or in Algeria, where French settlers were making a big push. And this was just about the time that new sciences like bacteriology and parasitology were begi

Antar frowned: 'You mean Ross didn't have any official support from the British government?'

'No, sir: the Empire did everything it could to get in his way. Besides, when it came to malaria the British were non-starters: the front-line work was being done in France and the French colonies, Germany, Italy, Russia, America – anywhere but where the Brits were. But you think Ross cared? You've got to hand it to the guy, he had balls, that motherfucker. There he is: he's at an age when most scientists start checking their pension funds; he knows sweet fuck all about malaria (or anything else); he's sitting out in the boonies somewhere where they never even heard of a lab; he hasn't set hands on a microscope since he left medical school; he's got a job in this dinky little outfit, the Indian Medical Service, which gets a couple of copies of Lancet and nothing else, not even the Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine, forget about the Johns Hopkins Bulletin or the A